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Zeppelin
Zeppelin - By using lighter than air cells and some way of directing motion, team uplift could travel by air, bypassing border patrols. This is a proposal that has been floating around on the thread for ages. In any case it is a complex project with many components and problems to be solved. In-character Reasons It is not possible to construct a Zeppelin prototype without first having the required knowledge, inspiration, and desire to do so. In particular, we can only control Hazo. While other party members could be capable of coming up with ideas and knowledge, it is probably unreliable at best. Possible paths to this knowledge include: * Experimentation with implosion seals in a container. * Thinking back on sky-lanterns and the tower jump. Hot air rises. * Thinking about the nature of a vacuum and how it relates to gas. Desire to do so: * Hazo likes to innovate and create new things * Supporting survival strategies - no one else would have flight, well out of reach. * Supporting merchant empire - much easier to transport cargo * Hidden heaven becomes much easier to reach and supply Sealing Tech Tree This is a list of seals that we have already developed, or need to develop. They arranged in a tree structure, listed from already developed seals to undeveloped seals, usually in order of development needed to be done. Red links marked a seal that is not yet available or developed. * Five-Seal Barrier - A seal that lock an object relative to earth while giving it massive damage resistance. :* One-Seal Barrier - A mobile version of the five-seal barrier without the lock, used to strengthen materials. Most likely to be weaker than the five-seal barrier. * Explosive Seal :* Shaped Charge Seal - A seal that provides unidirectional force. ::* Impulse Seal - A reusable and non-destructive version that should be able to provide propulsion for the zeppelin. * Implosion Seal - A seal that stores all air in a certain radius, creating a vacuum. Tends to become damaged and explode due to air rushing to fill the void. * Storage Seal - In its current form and without further development, it has a ready and wide variety of uses. It could be used to store a modular zeppelin, store counterweights, as well materials and supplies to make sure the Zeppelin is light enough for travel. Physical Construction Plans There are a few ways we could make a zeppelin, with a variety of required seals. The simplest, is to just make a seal which makes a material virtually indestructible or immobile relative to itself without fixing it to the reference frame of the earth. This would be a variant of the 5 Seal Barrier that Kagome currently knows. For the following paragraphs, I will refer to this variant as 1SB (or 1 seal barrier). Lift: Lift is achieved by having the total weight of the Zeppelin with any cargo be less than the weight of the air it displaces. If we assume we need to be able to bring four times the weight of team uplift, this means we need ~1000 kg of lift, which means the ship must displace ~1000 m^3 of air. So, we could have a single spherical balloon with a radius of 6 meters. For safety's sake, we should probably throw in a second. We need some form of airtight container which we can apply 1SB to to secure a rigid form such as the stomach of a giant whale. Once it is formed, we need to place an implosion seal inside it, which we can activate based on a timer, or from outside. After applying 1SB, have the implosion seal go off. Now we have lift. (As an alternative to using a vacuum to achieve lift, we could instead create a seal based on Akane's Elemental Mastery technique. The technique already creates a sphere of hot air around the user, so suspending a seal (or a cluster for longer flights) in the middle of a balloon or bladder should not be too difficult.) To counterbalance it so that we don't just fly away, we can just seal and unseal weights from storage seals. This lets us move up and down. For the sake of safety, the maximum altitude should be limited to ~3000 meters, until cabin pressurization and/or air scrubbing is available. Otherwise, occupants are at risk of altitude sickness. Any forms of Lift need to be modular and preferably re-inflateable mid-flight. Partitioning portions of the lift section will give us a greater chance to survive a hole being blown through our Zeppelin's most vulnerable area. Ideally, we should also have emergency balloons on standby just in case we need to replace the lift generated by a non-repairable damaged partition. This is, of course, a secondary concern to actually creating a working prototype. 'Assembly:' Leaving a Zeppelin unattended for other people to see and/or possibly steal is unacceptable. Therefore, our design has to have some assembly required before each launch so that we can carry the necessary materials in storage scrolls as we travel on foot. The canvas for the Zeppeling can simply be folded up and stored in a box in a scroll to prevent the forces of the storage scroll from ripping the material(s). For the undercarriage, we will need to use some type of plank-interlocking system by building off of our characters' experience creating the seal watch tower for the Arikdad mission. Ideally, we will have a modified 5 Seal Barrier seal that will allow us to lock our materials in place without them becoming imobile. We may need a special component to designate as the "center" for these seals since the original work references the center of the planet in order to function. The Zeppelin is primarily intended to be a long range form of transportation; it is not a get-away vehicle. Initial assembly time (starting from taking out all of the materials from their storage scrolls and ending when the Zeppelin is ready to launch) should take no longer than one hour, but this is not a hard requirement. The same goes for dis-assembly; the faster the better. Once we have a working model we can focus more on optimizing this portion of the project. For our first test runs if for some reason we must use a Zeppelin prototype to travel we will most likely be forced to destroy it upon landing just so it does not fall into enemy hands. One more issue to keep in mind is that all seals have an expiration date. If we try to remain airborne for too long and we do not have a way to reapply seals mid-flight we will be in deep trouble. Version 1.0 needs to have enough redundancies in its lift system to prevent catastrophic failure, where such failure involves all of our characters plummeting to their doom. So long as we remain airborne and can reach whatever might break we can salvage the situation. Thrust: We have explosive seals which break Newton's third law. We can use them for thrust. Simply create a secured off room and apply 1SB liberally. Then, point the explosive seal in the direction we want to go, and set it off. This gives us bursts of thrust equal to the force exerted by the explosive seal. In the longer term, a more typical Zeppelin shape would increase the efficiency. Placing the 'engine' in the nose of the vessel in front of the center of mass would give motive force, while control surfaces on the outside could steer the ship. Below is an example of the thrust engine. Countermeasures and Solutions * How do we avoid getting spotted? - The easiest solution is to simply to avoid traveling by day, and to navigate only by night. Note that navigation by night over ground is significantly different than navigating on the ground, and there is a strong possibility of getting lost. On the other hand, traveling in the air gives a greater range of sight, and if there is knowledge of constellations, traveling by the stars is fairly easy. Another solution is to use camouflaged materials in construction, making the craft difficult to see, as well as flying high enough to avoid observers on the ground. * What about charka beasts? - We already have means of dealing with opponents at range. Mori Keiko in particular is our weapon specialist who can accurately throw kunai at distance, or explosive tag or the Macerator Seal. We could work on dedicated weapon emplacement, such as a ballista or a seal derived weapon, but it isn't strictly necessary. Useful Information Standard Atmospheric Data1959 ARDC Model Atmosphere compiled by the USAFOxygen content information pulled from higherpeak.com/altitudechart.html Category:Transportation